100 years ago, a flood and its aftermath killed more than 360 people

1:56 PM,
Mar. 25, 2013

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Pearl Zeek didn't know the immense scale of the catastrophe that was unfolding. But she could see the water rising in her house.

In March 1913 she was 13 years old and living just north of downtown Hamilton with her father, mother, grandmother, three younger sisters and baby brother on what was then Lowell Street, a few blocks east of the Great Miami River. Days of torrential rain, much of it north of the city, caused the river to overflow its banks late on the morning of Tuesday, March 25.

As water rose in the Zeek home, Pearl's father, George, a machinist, used an ax to chop a hole through the ceiling. ...